Friendly, after having gazed upon him a few moments with the utmost astonishment and indignation, snatched away the note; and having rouzed him with a denunciation of resentment that touched those passions which Shakspeare could not touch, he thrust him out of the room and shut the door upon him: he then locked up his manuscript; and, after having walked many times backward and forward with great haste, he looked at his watch, and perceiving it to be near one in the morning, retired to bed with as little propensity to sleep as he had now left to his nephew.

No. XVIII. SATURDAY, JANUARY 6.

Duplex libelli dos est; quod risum movet,
Et quod prudenti vitam consilio monet.

PHED.

A twofold gift in this my volume lies;
It makes you merry, and it makes you wise.

AMONG the fictions which have been intended for moral purposes, I think those which are distinguished by the name of Fables deserve a particular consideration.

A story or tale, in which many different characters are conducted through a great variety of events, may include such a number and diversity of precepts, as, taken together, form almost a complete rule of life. As these events mutually depend upon each other, they will be retained in a series; and, therefore, the remembrance of one precept will almost necessarily

produce the remembrance of another; and the whole moral, as it is called, however complicated, will be recollected without labour and without confusion.

In this particular, therefore, the story seems to have the advantage of the fable, which is confined to some single incident; for though a number of distinct fables may include all the topics of moral instruction, caution, and advice, which are contained in a story, yet each must be remembered by a distinct effort of the mind;. and they will not recur in a series, because they have no connection with each other.

The memory of them may, however, be more frequently revived by those incidents in life to which they correspond; and they will, therefore, more readily present themselves, when the lessons which they teach should be practised.

Many, perhaps the greater number of those fables which have been transmitted to us as some of the most valuable remains of the simplicity and wisdom of antiquity, were spoken upon a particular occasion; and then the occasion itself was an index to the intent of the speaker, and fixed the moral of the fable. So when the Samians were about to put to death a man who had abused a public trust, and plundered the commonwealth, the counsel of Æsop could not be overlooked or mistaken, when he told them that "A Fox would not suffer a swarm of flies, which had almost satiated themselves by sucking his blood, to be driven away; because a new swarm might then come, and their hunger drain him of all the blood that remained."

Those which are intended for general use, and to general use it is perhaps easy to accommodate the rest, are of two kinds: one is addressed to the understanding, and the other to the passions.

Of the preceptive kind is that of the "Old Man, who, to teach his sons the advantage of unanimity, first directed them to break them a number of rods that were bound up together: and when they found it im

possible, bade them divide the bundle, and break the rods separately, which they easily effected." In this fable no passion is excited; the address is to the understanding, and the understanding is immediately convinced.

That of the Old Hound belongs to the other class. When the toothless veteran had seized the stag, and was not able to hold him, he deprecates the resentment of his master, who had raised his arm for the blow, by crying out, "Ah! do not punish the impotence of age! strike me not, because my will to please thee has survived my power! If thou art offended with what I am, remember what I have been, and forgive me." Pity is here forcibly excited; and injurious resentment may be repressed, when an instance not equally strong recalls this to the mind.

Fables of the preceptive kind should always include the precept in the event, and the event should be related with such circumstances as render the precept sufficiently evident. As the incident should be simple, the inference should be in the highest degree natural and obvious.

Those that produce their effect upon the passions, should excite them strongly, and always connect them with their proper objects.

I do not remember to have seen any collection in which these rules have been sufficiently observed; in far the greater number there is a deficiency of circumstance, though there is a redundancy of language; there is, therefore, something to be added, and something to be taken away. Besides that, the peculiar advantages of his method of instruction are given up, by referring the precept to a long discourse, of which the fable is no more than the text, and with which it has so little connection, that the incident may be perfectly remembered, and the laboured inference totally forgotten. A boy who is but six years old, will remember a fable after having once heard it, and relate it in words

of his own; but it would be the toil of a day to get the terms in which he heard it by heart; and, indeed, he who attempts to supply any deficiency in a fable, by tacking a dissertation to the end of it, appears to me to act, just as wisely, as if, instead of clothing a man whom he found naked, he should place a load upon his shoulders.

When the moral effect of fable had been thus brought to depend, not upon things, but upon words; the arrangement of these words into verse was thought to be a happy expedient to assist the memory; for in verse words must be remembered in a regular series, or the measure and cadence will not be preserved: the measure and cadence, therefore, discover any confusion or defect, not to the understanding, but to the ear; and shew how the confusion may be regulated, and the defect supplied. The addition of rhyme was another advantage of the same kind; and this advantage was greater, as the rhyme was more frequently repeated. But if the fable is perfect in its kind, this expedient is unnecessary; and much less labour is required to include an evident precept in an incident, than to measure the syllables in which it is related, and place two words of a similar scund at the end of every couplet. Besides, in all verse, however familiar and easy, the words are necessarily thrown out of the order in which they are commonly used; and, therefore, though they will be more easily recollected, the sense which they contain will not be equally perspicuous.

I would not, however, be thought to deny that verse is at least an ornament to this species of writing; nor to extend my censure to those short stories which, though they are called fables, are written upon a more extensive plan, and are intended for more improved understandings.

But as fables have been told by some in verse, that they might be more easily remembered; they have been related by others in a barbarous jargon of hack